Mar. 09, 2001

Taiwans Premier Image Technology Corp. this week announced that it would merge with Tekom Technologies Inc. of Taiwan to improve it's ability to develop and produce digital cameras. Details would be made public at a press conference on March 12.

Premier is the worlds largest OEM maker of traditional cameras. In order to develop its digital camera business, the company merged its subsidiary with Pretec. Corp. in July last year. In 2000, Premier turned out about 600,000 digital cameras, while Pretec delivered about 200,000. The merged company plans to ship a total of 1.3 million digital cameras this year.

Founded in late 1996, Tekom is an OEM/ODM manufacturer specializing in the design and manufacture of image input devices, such as digital cameras and digital video PC cameras. Gehe company produces ma9ny digital PC cameras with and other digital cameras with resolutions of 350,000, 1.3 million and 2.1 million pixels.

According to Premier, the merger with Tekom will strengthen its development and design capabilities as well as round out its product line, especially in the lower-end of the digital camera market.

Premier, established in 1983 as a traditional camera maker and diversifying into digital cameras in 1998, delivered 11 million traditional and 800,000 digital cameras last year. The company forecasts this volume to reach 12 million and 1.3 million units, respectively, this year.

Premier is currently developing several new digital camera models such as 2.3 million and 3.3 million-pixel cameras with 2.3 x and 3 x zoom lenses. The company also produces high-precision optical devices.